Humbly Confident Product Designer

AnywhereFull-timeAllows remote

YNAB is growing, and so is our product design team. We’re a software ecosystem that includes personal finance apps for web, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Android phones. If you’re the one we’re looking for, you have experience in designing great UI and UX for most of those platforms. More important, you’re a designer who views your job as that of problem solver. You come to the table not only with a knack for interaction design and love of logical UI patterns, but also with a deep empathy for people. We design our software to fit our users more than our fancy, and you love nothing more than digging through (or conducting!) research that leads the way in the design process. You’ve been around the block a few times and know what it means to design a mature, evolving product.

Requirements (these are real, actual requirements):

You must have at least 3 years of experience working in product design at a software company. Complex or data-rich applications are a plus.

Experience in designing applications for both web and mobile (in your cover letter, please include the platforms for which you have designed and your level of experience with them).

We are looking for a designer who has a strong background in UX and usability but who also can design UI independently. This is a truly mixed position where you will be responsible for activities traditionally held in the “UX” and “UI” wheelhouses. And a user-testing/research wheelhouse, too. (Can you have three wheelhouses? Are they still wheelhouses? Yes, sometimes we do philosophical tangents, too.)

That’s a super-brief intro of what you’ll be working on. But first, you need to know if you’ll even like working with us. We think you will.

A Bit About Us

We build YNAB (or “You Need a Budget” if you have a lot of extra time on your hands), the best budgeting software around. For more than a decade, people have been buying YNAB and then telling their friends what a difference it has made in their lives. (Google us, or read some of our reviews on the app store, and you’ll see what we mean.) We love building something that has a huge positive impact on people’s lives.

We’re profitable, bootstrapped, and growing. YNAB started in 2004 and we haven’t taken any outside funding—we’re in it for the long haul.

We have one overarching requirement when it comes to joining our team: ourCultural Manifesto has to really click with you. If you’re nodding emphatically while reading it, you’ll probably fit right in, in which case, we can’t wait to hear from you!

First, let’s talk about life at YNAB and then we’ll go into detail about what we’re looking for.

Who you’d be working with:

Todd, our Chief Strategy Officer, obsesses about continuously improving our products and the experiences they enable—and knows that begins with design. He’ll have any conversation where he has the chance to learn something, loves greyscale to an irrational extent, and enjoys ideas for their own sake. He likes long gaps of silence and very loud music, running ultramarathons, and wants to disappear someday to make hand-crafted furniture.

And our product designers:

Alan can be seen wearing many hats—and loving every second of it. He could be interviewing users one day and programming a prototype in Framer the next. He loves exploring ideas with teammates and lives for that rush when the team discovers a novel solution to a difficult problem. When he’s not busy designing, he’s probably either at Crossfit or working to improve his culinary skills... or contemplating the conflicts that occasionally arise between the two.

Dylan loves organizing design systems, obsessing over typographic details, and everything in between. Above his desk (ahem, kitchen table, it's a small apartment after all) sits an inconspicuous letterpressed card with Dieter Rams' 10 principles of good design on it. He lives in Canada with a six-toed cat named Pawpaw. In his spare time he's probably taking photos or running—sometimes at the same time.

Andrea has spent a lengthy career knee-deep in interactive design. Today she finds great satisfaction in her dream job at YNAB where design and helping others converge—the perfect environment for empathic-driven design. After work, this compulsive doodler cherishes her time with her husband and kids. Soaking up live music, art, and setting sail on the occasional cruise are among her favorite to-dos.

Cindy sweats the small details when it comes to crafting simple, intuitive experiences. She loves having conversations with our users, and digs deep to find the root of their needs before exploring a solution. On most weekends (and some weekdays, depending on the daylight saving time), you can probably find her outdoors chasing sunrise and sunset with a camera in hand.

How You’ll Work at YNAB

We work really hard to make working at YNAB an amazing experience. We have a team full of truly exceptional people—the kind you’ll be excited to work with. Here’s how we operate:

Live Where You Want

We’re a distributed team, so you can live and work wherever you want. Proximity doesn’t influence productivity. Taylor, our CTO, was traveling who-knows-where for a couple of years before he bought a farm. Up and move to France for a year? Sure, Todd did that. Don’t like France? How about London, where Janelle trotted off to. Tulsa Remote? Can do. Or if you just love LA or Baltimore or Buenos Aires, we’ve got people there, too. Not all of us move around, but the fact that these folks have is totally okay because we’re all adults. Just make sure you have a reliable internet connection.

No Crazy Hours

We rarely work more than 40 hours per week. There have been a few occasions where things got a little crazy and people had to log some extra hours. But then they took some extra time off, so it all balances out. We work hard and smart but we’re in this for the long haul, no need to go crazy on the hours.

Take Vacation (Seriously)

We want you to take vacation. In fact, we have a minimum vacation policy of three weeks per year. Five weeks feels about right (plus two extra weeks for Christmas break). It’s important to get out and do something. We’ll look forward to seeing pictures of your vacation in our internal chat room, creatively named #office_wall.

The YNAB Meetup

We get the teams together once a year to catch up on spreadsheets and powerpoints in a Best Western conference room. Just kidding. So far, we’ve done Costa Rica, a gigantic cabin in the mountains, a beach house in the Outer Banks, and a ranch in Montana. We do really fun things, but the highlight always seems to be just hanging out together and having a blast.

Up Your Game

We’re serious about helping you improve your craft. We budget for it (hey-o!). Think conferences, Lynda subscriptions, dedicated time away from work to learn something new… it’s really up to you and your manager. But we love to see our people growing.

International is Absolutely Okay

If you are Stateside, we’ll set you up as a W2 employee. If you’re international, you’ll be set up as a contractor. Employee or contractor, it’s all the same to us. You’re part of the team. (We are spread all over the world: Switzerland, Scotland, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Canada, and all over the United States.)

If You’re Stateside…

YNAB offers fantastic health, dental, and vision insurance, where we cover 100% of the premium for you and your family. (No need to check your vision, you read that right, 100%. Although if you did need to check your vision, NBD, we’ve got you covered!)

We also have a Traditional and Roth 401k option. YNAB contributes three percent whether you choose to throw any money in there or not. It vests immediately. (Are you a personal finance junkie like our founder Jesse? He set up YNAB’s 401k to have the lowest fee structure possible, where all plan costs are paid by YNAB, not your retirementnest egg. The investment funds available are fantastic, passively-managed, ultra low-cost index funds. You’re not a PF junkie? Trust us, it’s awesome.)

Other Tidbits

Once you start, we DEMAND (in a friendly, ALL CAPS IS YELLING way) that you fill out your “Bucket List” spreadsheet with 50 items. (That’s harder than it sounds!)

The bucket list really helps in deciding what we should give you for your birthday and Christmas: No gift cards here. We tried that. Super boring.

We have a bonus plan based on profitability. You’ll be in on that from day one. YNAB wins, you win. That kind of thing.

We’re all adults. There’s no need to punch a clock, or ask for permission to take off early one afternoon to go see the doctor (health insurance premium 100% covered!). We look at what you accomplish, not how long you sit (have you tried standing?) in front of a computer.

We want you firing on all cylinders so we’ll set you up with a shiny new computer and replace it every three years.

Did I mention we make a huge, positive difference in people’s lives? You may not think that matters much, but then a few months down the road you’ll realize it’s made your job really, really enjoyable. Don’t underestimate this one!

If this sounds like your ideal environment, read on because now I want to talk about you. You will play a big, big part in helping YNAB customers achieve success. You will change lives. I’ll only say that six more times.

Now, back to you, our new Product Designer...

What Success Looks Like:

At YNAB, our goal is for our users to achieve life changing financial control. No small thing, right? You’ll join our four product designers, working on both our web and mobile platforms. In 2019, we’ll focus intensely on making YNAB effortless and helping new budgeters get started effectively, from their very first experience. You will also help us develop systems and processes to more efficiently deliver top-notch, dare we say life-changing, experiences to our users.

You’ll need to:

Understand the journey our users take, not just as they use our apps, but in the real world as they seek to take control of their financial lives.

Learn the design system, UI patterns, and financial logic of our apps like the back of your hand. You have no problem designing a cross-platform feature for the web and mobile apps. You can clearly discern and navigate the relationship between the UI and the available data behind the scenes.

Solve design problems in a user-centric feedback loop. Research plays a big part in our design process so you’ll need to break down analytics and user feedback to make informed design decisions. You’ll also follow up on the data gathered after the feature is released and continue to iterate and improve your designs until the data confirms success.

Shepherd your work from ideation to release. You will document your work for review with fellow designers, developers, and stakeholders, make agreed-upon refinements, and will work with the developers on the upcoming feature. Design reviews during the development process examine form and function and you will see the feature through to the end.

Be comfortable iterating with low-fidelity designs and prototypes while working in cross-functional teams made up of developers, marketers, and customer-facing team members (waterfalls are for rivers!), while continuing to pursue a meticulous and thorough design.

Communicate and document the styling, user flows, and the impact of your designs on other parts of the system. You’ll update this documentation as feedback comes in and the apps evolve. On the flip side, you’ll provide feedback in design reviews that is clear and helpful in moving our products forward.

Communicate, explain, persuade, explore and otherwise get all the things done in writing. Yes, we like talking to each other, but as a remote team, much of our collaboration is asynchronous and written.

Be comfortable writing a first pass at UI copy which is then refined with the help of your team in design reviews. There’s no lorem ipsum here.

You are comfortable speaking the language of software development. If you’re also comfortable diving into HTML and CSS (or even one of the programming languages in our development stack!) to help implement your design work, that’s a plus, but it’s not a requirement.

We use Figma for the vast majority of design work and maintaining our design system. You will aide in the expansion and maintenance of the design system and feel comfortable contributing new UI for our applications and website. If you have experience developing and maintaining design systems and can help us strike a balance between fighting for consistency and pushing the design system forward, that’s another plus.

Be comfortable talking to customers in user interviews and usability testing. You have a knack for summarizing research in a concise way to share with teammates.

Finally, the success of a designer at YNAB hinges upon the ability to approach design as holistic problem solving for both user and business goals. We work collaboratively here and you’ll listen to ideas, questions, and critiques from teammates with grace and patience. That said, you know your stuff and can eloquently and logically explain design decisions. You see this type of exchange as critical to the success of yourself and our product: it is through sharing ideas and being open to the brilliance of others that we arrive at the best solutions.

And, since our job descriptions are already so long, what’s another sentence or two…

YNAB is an equal opportunity employer. We believe diversity of backgrounds, beliefs, and experiences to be critical to our success and are passionate about creating a welcoming, supportive, and collaborative environment for all employees. All are encouraged to apply as we continue to grow a smart, hard-working, and diverse team who love working together to build something that matters.

How to Apply

Apply below by 11:59PM on March 24th, 2019.Firm. It’s a real deadline. Like, after it is too late.

Attach a pdf of your cover letter. In your cover letter:

Introduce yourself and explain why this position is of interest to you, and why you would be a great fit.

We love a designer with a perspective. What’s yours? Feel free to touch on your beliefs on how design should be done, what it’s used for, or why it’s important.

If you have a prepared resume, attach it in PDF form. If you don’t have a resume because you aren’t even sure you’re looking to change jobs, that’s fine! An informal list of your work and education history are all we’re looking for.

P.S. If you’re not interested in or available for this position, but know someone who might be, we would really appreciate it if you passed this along!